I am an experienced freelance technology journalist. I write for Wired, The Next Web, TrustedReviews and the BBC in addition to Forbes.

I began in b2b print journalism covering tech companies at the height of the dot com boom and switched to covering consumer technology as the iPod began to take off.

A career highlight for me was being a founding member of TrustedReviews. It started in 2003 and we were repeatedly told websites could not compete with print! Within four years we were purchased by IPC Media (Time Warner's publishing division) to become its flagship tech title.

What fascinates me are the machinations of technology's biggest companies. Got a pitch, tip or leak? Contact me on Twitter , Google+, my professional Facebook page or via email: gordonATgordonkelly.com. I don't bite.

Forbes Ultimate Gadget Gift Guide 2013: Best And Bargain Ideas

Christmas is closing in and there is no time for messing around. So if you need a single source for the best and budget picks in every consumer technology category you have come to the right place. Let’s get straight into it.

SmartphonesBest: Apple iPhone 5S (~ $649 unlocked) Apple continues to get stick for not evolving the iPhone range, but in truth its smaller 4-inch screen size blinds skeptics from a phone which is truly cutting edge. Speed, camera performance, call quality and build quality are all among the best in the sector and its new Touch ID fingerprint scanner is the first truly useful implementation of biometric security on any phone. Unless you want a bigger screen, the 5S is the complete package and while the design of iOS7 is polarizing it closes the gap on Android’s greater functionality. It remains the most polished handset on the market.

Bargain: Google / LG Nexus 5 (~ $349 unlocked) Of course Android fans will be shaking their heads, but they shouldn’t because my favorite handset in 2013 is actually my budget pick: the Nexus 5. Blazing performance, a gorgeous 5-inch Full HD screen, tasteful design and staggeringly cheap price tag mean it stands head and shoulders above the competition, including the excellent HTC One. Battery life could be better, but camera and loudspeaker concerns were largely fixed with Android 4.4.2, an update which maintains Android’s position as the best mobile OS available.

Honorable mention: Motorola Moto G (~ $179 unlocked) A rare additional category, in this case because acclaim must also go to the exceptional Motorola Moto G. If your budget is very tight this is the best handset priced below a Nexus 5… and yet it costs half the price. Nippy, well made, a sharp 4.5-inch screen and all day battery life to embarrass most cutting edge smartphones, the Moto G is a gem.

PhabletBest: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (~ $649) Samsung gets a lot of abuse for the changes it makes to stock Android and the bloated software it adds. This is deserved, but the Note 3 is fast enough to handle it all and still perform like a champ. It has a glorious 5.7-inch Full HD screen, a class leading camera and enough battery life to last a few days between charges. The integrated S Pen stylus is also supported by smart software, reminding you that fingers are not the only way to effortlessly control a device.

Bargain: Samsung Galaxy Mega (~ $360) It is a clean sweep for the Korean giant with this outrageous, affordable 6.3-inch phablet. The Mega is likely to be challenged by a budget version of the Note 3 next year, but for Christmas it is a great wallet friendly option with a surprisingly sharp 720-pixel screen, snappy performance, expandable storage and even support for 4G. There’s also great battery life, something which is fast becoming a key selling point of the larger phablet form factor.

TabletBest: Apple iPad Air (from ~$499) This iPad Air is Apple perfecting its large screen 9.7in tablet form factor. Somehow it slices nearly 30 per cent off the weight of its predecessor yet gets even faster and lasts just as long. It isn’t so much a new iPad as a big screen, super powered iPad mini, which is far more desirable. The absence of Touch ID as seen on the iPhone 5S is a disappointment, but the unparalleled variety and quality of iOS tablet apps means it still stands head and shoulders above similarly sized competition. That said we expect strong competition from a new Nexus 10 in early 2014.

Budget: Google Nexus 7 (from ~$199) 2013 was the year small form-factor tablets fulfilled their promise. While the iPad mini got a significant upgrade, the 2nd generation Nexus 7 is the more impressive device. It has a better (if smaller) screen, is faster and much cheaper than Apple’s offering and while the dedicated tablet apps in Android aren’t as comprehensive as Apple’s they are growing fast. A poor camera shouldn’t put off buyers from what is an absolute bargain.

FitnessBest: Fitbit Force (~$129.99) It has been a breakthrough year for Fitbit as the Force takes on the might of Nike and Jawbone and comes out on top. An AMOLED screen displays your steps as they are counted and it cleverly doubles as a smartwatch by receiving notifications from your phone (though app support is limited at present). Battery life lasts nearly a week, it is water resistant and can even operate as a vibrating wrist alarm so you won’t wake up a partner in the morning. The icing on the cake is a superb user dashboard with adjustable goals and the ability to compete with Fitbit-owning friends.

Budget: Fitbit One (~$99) Fitbit also takes the budget price with the wonderfully fully featured One. Like the Force it can measure steps, distance, calories burned, stairs climbed and sleep patterns and even operate as a silent alarm. It can’t double as a smartwatch and it doesn’t wrap around your wrist, but some argue this makes it a more accurate tracker as it isn’t influenced by hand movements. The Fitbit Zip is even cheaper at under $60, but less fully featured and for an extra $20 or $30 the extra outlay is well worth it.

SmartwatchBest: Pebble (~$150) It has been an unusual year for smartwatches. The expensive options, headlined by the awful Samsung Galaxy Gear, have all been a letdown and simple Kickstarter sensation the Pebble continues to lead the way. This affordable, e-ink monochrome smartwatch works how a smartwatch should. It displays handset notifications rather than trying to be its own device. This leads to week-long battery life, affordable pricing and an intuitive user experience. It is also waterproof and works with any smartphone operating system. Until the likes of Apple, Google or Samsung make a breakthrough with a fully independent smartwatch, this is the model to get.

Bargain: MetaWatch Strata (~$129) Another Kickstarter sensation, the Strata has lived in the shadow of the Pebble but it offers all the same functionality and costs about the same. This means the Strata is also used primarily to display smartphone notifications rather than operate independently and its design is more rugged than the Pebble while the battery life still lasts a week. The downside is the Strata is less intuitive than the Pebble with a confusing button layout and quirky menus. Personally speaking it is also uglier.

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“but the unparalleled variety and quality of iOS tablet apps means it still stands head and shoulders above similarly sized competition.”

Dell Venue line or Microsoft Surface line easily outdoes iOS in terms of variety and quality of applications (you know, the heavy hitting big brother to those useless tiny “apps”), there’s millions of programs and you can make your own without shelling out $200 for SDK access.

“PC makers should be ashamed that the MacBook Pro has had virtually no competition throughout 2013. ”

Plenty of far more superior laptops out there. Any reporter who actually cared about the truth would have at least mentioned the Toshiba Kira, it beats the MBP13/15 in absolutely every category, screen quality, battery life, weight, and price.

” Its combination of a large 15in Retina display (2880 x 1800 pixels),”

The one thing many don’t understand about the so called retina displays is that they only use overlay screen scaling, the OS still only lets you display at 1080p (1920×1200) like 99% of the other laptops out there. Sure the display may be marginally better compared to a 1080p screen with linux or OSX on it, but Windows includes a subpixel sampling technology called ClearType, which gives results that most people can’t distinguish without a magnifying glass.

1. I doubt you’ll find many who agree Windows Phone or Windows RT have more tablet apps than iOS. If you’re comparing iOS to Windows 8 is apples and oranges.

2. The Kira is a 13.3in ultrabook, it has no relevance as a comparison to a 15.6in MacBook Pro since the vital two are screen size and performance. The Dell M3800 is the real contender (as I mention) and it holds a lot of promise, but won’t be widely available until January

3. What you’re discussing is the Windows desktop’s inability to scale. This is a major problem and the greater text enlargement option introduced in Windows 8.1 is no fix for legacy software where the icons become tiny and unusuable. That said this is the fault of Microsoft for failing to properly re-code the desktop in Windows 8 rather than the fault of the PC makers. Still these inconveniences are often worth it to designers and photographers (to name but a few groups) who find these resolutions vital to their work. Mac OS X handles scaling better as it is vector based, but it isn’t without its flaws.

“. I doubt you’ll find many who agree Windows Phone or Windows RT have more tablet apps than iOS.”

Considering more than 50% of iOS apps have never been downloaded and 99% of downloads belong to 1% of apps, I’m not sure why you are bothering with that.

But notice I stated Dell Venue first, which means I’m talking about x86 based tablets with full Windows 8.1. There’s tens of millions of applications written that work with Windows 8.1, and if you install bluestacks you get most android apps on top of the win-rt ones as well.

“If you’re comparing iOS to Windows 8 is apples and oranges.”

No, I’m comparing toys to big boy devices. A tablet is a tablet by virtue of it’s form factor, not OS or processor. Windows 8 is as much a competitor to iOS as OSX depending on that form factor, in the case of tablets Windows 8 is certainly a valid competitor.

“The Kira is a 13.3in ultrabook, it has no relevance as a comparison to a 15.6in MacBook Pro since the vital two are screen size and performance. ”

Says who? Most people I know want portability with reasonable performance first and foremost. 15″ laptops were only popular a few years ago because they were cheaper than their thinner, lighter counterparts. Anyone that actually wants performance gets a workstation, and anyone that wants a bigger screen just buys a cheap monitor.

“ What you’re discussing is the Windows desktop’s inability to scale. This is a major problem and the greater text enlargement option introduced in Windows 8.1 is no fix for legacy software where the icons become tiny and unusuable.”

Not at all, I am discussing the subjective quality of text on a screen for quality, and the fact that non- HiDPI enabled programs default to lower scaling and many games can’t access anything above 1920×1200 even if they had the option in their Windows counterparts.

And quite simple to fix actually, Vista and later systems support scaling to arbitrary sizes, and properly programmed applications can take advantage of it. Other programs will just be scaled directly. 100% identical to the conditions that determine if OSX uses better HiDPI modes or simply scales. Perhaps if you actually used both systems you would have noticed that it works on far more than just text.

“Still these inconveniences are often worth it to designers and photographers (to name but a few groups) who find these resolutions vital to their work. ”

1) If a photographer needs to pixel peep, he didn’t take that great of a photo. If you do need to pixel peep, 100% is more zoomed in (easier to see) when the display resolution is lower.

2) Most professionals ignore laptops in the first place. Between the 50gb per thousand photos and the price-performance difference between desktops and laptops, the fact is that anyone who wants to improve their work efficiency just goes with a workstation. There are edge cases, but very few.

“ Mac OS X handles scaling better as it is vector based, but it isn’t without its flaws.”

Not really sure where you got that idea. Here’s a few issues:

1) OSX only includes vector based components, but a majority of the scaling is done differently. The primary scaling method programs use is simply including a set of icons four times the size of normal icons (“retina” displays are 4x the previous maximum resolution) in addition to the standard 1-1 sized icons.

2) There are many issues that can completely destroy HiDPI mode compatibility, from rendering to a screen resolution buffer size (which is usually smaller than HiDPI mode buffers) before display to just having images. A bigger issue is OpenGL, where even if the program was properly made to support different buffer and screen resolutions (something DirectX went one step beyond in DX11.2), the added overhead of rendering to HiDPI can kill performance, and not using it yields zero benefits. In fact, Apple suggests reducing rendering quality simply to enable HiDPI, which sounds a lot like turning off lights if it’s too dark.

3) Vector graphics based programs are available in every OS that supports DX or OpenGL (among other display technologies), and everything can be made to scale indefinitely given the right amount of resources. It’s just how you can get sharp corners on your boxes (or round ones) no matter how high or low the resolution is. It is not limited to OSX and in fact predates both OSX and Windows.

With all due respect, I work with professional photographers regularly and they were consulted for this. Not a single one would want to do professional photography editing on anything smaller than a 15in screen. Typically they work on large, very high resolution monitors but for laptop work a 15in screen is the bare minimum.

“Not a single one would want to do professional photography editing on anything smaller than a 15in screen. Typically they work on large, very high resolution monitors but for laptop work a 15in screen is the bare minimum.”

On the go editing is a very small population of not so dedicated photographers. If you go to Central Park in the summer you will sometimes see fashion photographers take a desktop computer there just to do minor editing. Usually if you need a laptop, it’s because you are quickly checking shots, not because you are planning on editing there. Just like nobody would seriously try to edit with a trackpad, nobody really uses laptops for heavy duty tasks either.

Still doesn’t address the concern that outside a few people who won’t care about your article because they know what they need, most are not looking for a massive overweight laptop.

Also doesn’t change the fact you are dead wrong about the scaling thing.

I’m almost to the point where I think anyone in tech that is an Apple cultist should do Apple-only articles and then everything-else articles, because there are so very many people who would never touch one of their products.